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STEPS Centre Profile picture
@stepscentre
Apr 7, 2020 • 5 tweets • 2 min read • Read on X
BLOG: Modernity without its clothes: the pandemic crisis shines a light on futilities of control | Andy Stirling

steps-centre.org/blog/modernity…

#COVID19 #uncertainty
(Image: Rob Oo / cc-by 2.0) Engine control room
"What is now becoming devastatingly undermined is the general credibility of any confident performance of predictive control...

What the pandemic shows is that in the wider, long-run ‘real world’ of human affairs, *control does not exist*."
"Just as a hammer can condition its holder to see every problem as a nail, so unfolding Modernities around the world are ironically enslaved by their perennial aspirations to control."
"Control has also not only failed to live up to expectations, but yielded so many perverse kinds of backlash as to often be seriously counterproductive. So what is distinctive about this global pandemic is not its novelty, but its intensity."
"Whatever futures may struggle into being, the present pandemic suggests these will likely turn out better if shaped in opposite ways to this failing reflex of control."

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More from @stepscentre

STEPS Centre Profile picture
Sep 11, 2020
Ports, pipelines, roads, wind farms and plantations in Africa's drylands are part of a modernist vision led by states & industry. But the reality doesn't always match the vision, as a new book explores.

steps-centre.org/blog/how-have-…
(Img: Geo Thermal/Flickr/cc-by-nc-2.0) Image
"A type of ‘growth talk’ emphasises the presumed benefits of outside investment for expanding markets & economic activities in marginal rural areas. Actors in national governments become gatekeepers to foreign investment and are well-positioned to benefit personally from deals."
"The reconfiguration of land ownership and use, while perhaps not as dramatic as earlier ‘land grabbing’ debates feared, has been profound, creating a new politics of land and investment in the pastoral regions..."
Read 5 tweets
STEPS Centre Profile picture
Aug 19, 2020
“we have a global political economy of deep structural inequality that permits
the angst of publics &policy-makers to set the agenda for how mobilities are understood. This perspective undergirds restrictive regimes of mobility & hardened border controls.” taylorfrancis.com/books/e/978100…
“Although labour markets globally thrive on the circulation of workers, the dominant rhetoric intimates an uncontrolled over-supply of labour, often of the wrong type, which in turn nourishes discursive distinctions between wanted and unwanted migrants...”
“In this language, mobility is associated with risk and uncertainty in countries and regions perceived to be at the receiving end of migra- tory flows, and this discourse sanctions a technocratic approach that seeks to stem the influx of unwanted migrants.”
Read 5 tweets
STEPS Centre Profile picture
Jul 21, 2020
Is #climate action too attached to the modern idea of 'control'?

In this series of 4 blog posts, Andy Stirling (@SPRU) makes the case for a more 'caring' approach to climate disruption & the democratic struggle towards human flourishing.

steps-centre.org/tag/climate-po…

Thread 👇
1: Is the naming of 'climate change' a dangerous self-defeat? Could the term 'climate disruption' help to point towards the root causes - in industrial modernity - of multiple devastating assaults on Nature?

steps-centre.org/blog/is-the-na…
2. Does the illusion of 'climate control' do more harm than good? What are the pitfalls of an obsession with numbers, deadlines, solutions and predictions to save the climate?

steps-centre.org/blog/does-the-…
Read 5 tweets
STEPS Centre Profile picture
Jul 16, 2020
🎉NEW BOOK🎉
The Politics of Uncertainty: Challenges of Transformation

edited by @IanScoones and Andy Stirling @SPRU

Open Access e-version: taylorfrancis.com/books/e/978100…

Buy a copy: routledge.com/The-Politics-o…
"While risk and uncertainty are often described in technocratic ways that create fear or the feeling of being overwhelmed by complexity, the book offers us a new way to reimagine how society can engage with uncertainty... It could not come at a better time." @MazzucatoM
"This collection integrates leading insights on the diverse, evolving challenges presented by these persistent conditions – a truly unique resource." - Brian Wynne
Read 9 tweets
STEPS Centre Profile picture
Jul 8, 2020
"There is always the prospect of a new pandemic... In our desperation to be beyond lockdowns, we crave ‘normality’, but the world of zoonotic disease does not allow for stability."

steps-centre.org/blog/pandemics…

@IanScoones reviews the new issue of @DoftWT's book 'On Pandemics'
Science, uncertainty and the Covid-19 response

steps-centre.org/blog/science-u…

by @IanScoones
Post-normal pandemics: Why COVID-19 requires a new approach to science

steps-centre.org/blog/postnorma…

by @DoftWT, Annibale Biggeri, Bruna De Marchi, @SFuntowicz, Mario Giampietro, Martin O’Connor, Jerome R. Ravetz, @AndreaSaltelli and @Jeroen_vdSluijs

#postnormalscience
Read 6 tweets
STEPS Centre Profile picture
Jul 6, 2020
It's 10 years since the UN recognised the right to access safe drinking water & sanitation. But 2.5bn people lack safe water, and 4.5bn have no adequate sanitation. #Covid19 brings these problems into sharp relief.

steps-centre.org/blog/covid-19-…
Blogpost by @Lylamehta & Claudia Ringler
Lyla Mehta and Claudia Ringler are among the authors of the book 'Water for Food Security, Nutrition and Social Justice':

routledge.com/Water-for-Food…
In March, they were interviewed by the researcher Lidia Cabral for the @IDS_UK 'Between the Lines' podcast.

Listen: shows.acast.com/betweentheline…
Read 7 tweets

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